NEA Fellow. Visiting Assistant Professor of CW - UCR. Books: The Fire Eater; Bad Mexican, Bad American; The Parachutist; Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man.
Looking to draft new poems/prose poems for a submission or manuscript? Come join our online generative workshop meeting Saturday mornings in May via zoom.
Feel free to DM with any questions...
Once in awhile I remember the Elliot line from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: "I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Which poetic lines pop in your head every now and then?
Remember a while back when I said an exciting press requested to see my manuscript? Well, good news: they accepted it & are going to publish it! Acre Books, an imprint of The Cincinnati Review will publish my poetry collection: Bad Mexican, Bad American! Coming Spring 2024!🎉🎉🎉
Dear Editors, friendly reminder: do not ask me to italicize the Spanish words in my poems. I learned this from Eduardo C. Corral many yrs ago & agree that Spanish, like Chicanxs in general, is not foreign to the Americas.
Excited to announce that my third full-length poetry collection “Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man” was selected by Juan Felipe Herrera as the winner of the 2023 Benjamin Saltman Award and will be published by Red Hen Press next year!🎉🎉🎉
COVER REVEAL‼️‼️‼️‼️Excited to share the cover of my forthcoming book “Bad Mexican, Bad American” (Acre Books, 2024) coming in February 2024! I will have copies at AWP Kansas City, see you there. Art by J. Chavez.
Out of the hospital! Feeling better. Rejuvenated and grateful. Mil gracias, sincerely, to everyone for the love. Y’all are truly beautiful. Excited to get back in the poetry & teaching game.🔥
Here's the official announcement: Sundress Publications will publish my second full-length book, "The Parachutist," in early 2025. My thx to the kind editors. Excited to share my work with everyone soon! 🎉🎉🎉
Can't wait to send my h.s. English teacher my poetry book "Bad Mexican, Bad American." Still remember junior year of high school when I sat in her class, a "c" student, suspended twice for fighting, thinking, "this teacher makes writing sound interesting. I want to be a
Shout out to all the poets. Whether you're published or unpublished. Writing for years or months. From personal experience I know people have questioned me as a writer. Those people are usually miserable on the inside. Keep doing your thing. Keep shining.🔥💯
I want to give a shout out to all poets/writers. No one started off widely published. We most likely all went through rejection. Have patience with your craft. It gets better. Show respect, but don't let anyone belittle you. Much love & good luck!✍️📚💙
Lit mags are like: "We open for submissions tomorrow! Send us your best, your worst, your most defiant, the squirrel you ran over on the freeway, the drive-thru receipts piling up in your car, your sonnets, your odes to the decline of western civilization as we know it!"
OMG two of my prose poems have been accepted at POETRY Magazine! So happy! They will publish "Cuauhtémoc Xochipilli" and "The Jaguar and the Mango" in an upcoming issue. Dream come true.
#stoked
#orale
Over the past 7 yrs, I submitted to Crazyhorse 15 times, plus some that were withdrawn. Happy to have 3 poems/prose poems in the Fall 2021 issue. Anyway, thought I'd share.
#keepsubmitting
shout out to people who write. who sit down to create something that wasn't there before. shout out to people who innovate, explore. people interested in sound, rhythm, form. shout out to first drafts, hard edits, fine-tuning, stepping back, coming back, the thrill, the triumph.
Shout out to ALL the writers.. regardless of awards, books, publications, etc. If you are writing at all.. you are building, imagining, uplifting, speaking truth to power, rebelling, inspiring... creating something from nothing & that is a hell of a lot. 🔥💯
So excited to announce I have been named the Fall 2023 Carolyn Moore Writer in Residence, sponsored by Portland Community College! See you in the fall Pacific Northwest!
@PCC_CMWH
🎉🎉🎉🍾🍾🍾
Excited to receive an acceptance letter from The Yale Review! They will publish my prose poem "The Stranger" as "Poem of the Week." I remember yrs ago mailing submissions to The Yale Review via snail mail before they went online. Finally made it in!🔥
I was waitlisted to my MFA program. Got in.
I was waitlisted to a CW PHD program. Didn't get in.
I won an NEA at 33 after my first-time submitting.
I've been rejected by certain journals for yrs.
All this to say: keep submitting!
If you recently published a poem and felt it didn't get much of an audience bc perhaps you are new to Twitter or something else.. feel free to share it in this thread! I'd love to read it.💘
I stole this from a writer who meant to criticize this poem by Diane Seuss but damn look at the mastery of voice, stream of consciousness, it’s intensity, vulnerability, not to mention the vision & amplification of the mundane/setting, juxtaposed/exposed/layered w/the
When I was in high school my mom enrolled in community college. She never had a chance to go to school beyond a few yrs at elementary in Mexico. Everything was new to her. She sat in the front. She would ask so many questions. The young American students would make fun of her.
A writer who took some generative prose poetry workshops w/me last yr wrote to tell me she wrote so many prose poems she eventually had a manuscript & she just won first prize in a distinguished contest & her book will be published! & I'm going to write the blurb! Too exciting!🥳
when you don't publish: "they're not a real writer."
when you publish a lot: "they're a sellout."
when you hustle 3 different gigs/jobs: "they're commercial."
when you're a minimalist: "they're lazy."
bottom line: do what you love.
Do you have a poem you published recently which perhaps didn't get as many views as you wanted? Feel free to share it in this thread. I think a screenshot would work fine.
Anytime you see a writer celebrating a publication or a book etc understand that it likely took years misery rejections etc so don't hate celebrate...💯
BIG NEWS: excited to join the team at
@PalettePoetry
as an Editor starting in June! I'll be working on the editorial feedback side of things. Shout out to Joshua Roark for the invite. Can't wait to get started! Btw, we are currently open for submissions.
#grateful
#orale
🙏💚
shout out to the poets. keep writing, not writing, submitting, editing, teaching, taking breaks, naps, checking your email, calling a friend, meditating, exercising, celebrating, watching hulu to unwind, congratulating others, keep being yourself even if the world can feel
I want to bring attention to poetry books published in the pandemic. Pls feel free to share a link to your book/chapbook published during the pandemic or forthcoming later this year. THX!
A dream publisher asked to see my latest full-length manuscript after I queried them! I know to not get too excited yet, but still feels really great. 😎🤓🙏
I remember sending off submissions via snail mail to
@YaleReview
10 yrs ago. Have been looking forward to this day for a while. Today, my prose poem "The Stranger" from my second full manuscript is "Poem of the Week" on the YR site.🤎🙏
More here:
Started the decade hospitalized for mental health issues. Ended it w/an MFA, NEA fellowship, & published in over 50 literary magazines, including: Poetry, The Iowa Review, & The American Poetry Review.
#PoetrySaves
#EndTheStigma
So honored to have my new poem "Hey" published in Poem-a-Day by today! Special thank you to poetry icon Diane Seuss for selecting my poem & all of the poems for March!
Read the poem here:
Just talked to the editor of The Yale Review. My prose poem "The Stranger" will be published later this month on their site. Again, I wonder, how is this life??🙃
one of my new manuscripts got picked up/won an award. can't disclose details yet. but v psyched & grateful despite being home sick & unable to celebrate lol more soon..
Pro-tip: don't compare yourself to writers who've been doing it for yrs. That's a miserable way to live. Instead, set reasonable goals, realize prolific writing usually comes from prolific reading, & remember to show love bc life is short.
Excited that one of my favorite poets & the current Pulitzer Prize winner Diane Seuss has chosen one of my poems for "Poem-a-day" series! To appear next year...🔥
realizing I received checks for poetry or readings from Cornell, Yale, & Harvard within the last calendar year. Not bad for a first-gen Mexican American poet who often doubted himself.. :)
working since 5am today, but just signed a contract w/The Georgia Review; a journal that rejected me for 5 yrs & at one point I thought I was fooling myself for even submitting. lol.
well, Copper Canyon passed but said my manuscript "was a favorite among some of our editorial readers." This is a good sign bc last yr, when I submitted it, it still needed some work/edits.. I'll take it..
Abt 7 yrs ago, as a young mfa student, I went to meet w/my professor & outside her office were copies of Crazyhorse & The Southern Review. I remember how beautiful the issues looked. I remember thinking, one day I will be in there. This yr I was accepted into both journals. 🤎🙏
a writer I worked w/just notified me they won a $25K teaching fellowship for Black writers & wrote to thank me bc they drafted a poem from the submission in my class. So stoked & proud of them! 🎉🎉🎉
I think I've been rejected by 32 poems, Adroit Journal, Black Warrior Review like 10+ times each. Still probably going to keep submitting to them, just want to show it's not always easy & persistence/patience is a big part of it. Also, yes, sometimes it's just not a good fit...
MFA/Phd decisions season reminder: I was wait-listed onto my MFA program. Now, I am on the notable alumni list for their Poets & Writers page. I say this not to brag or take a jab at my MFA program (which I love), but to show that we (or our art) are not always how we are ranked.
I shared a poem by Ada Limón & casually mentioned she is the first Latina U.S. Poet Laureate. Within seconds a random white guy I don't follow was quick to point out "the only thing that matters is she's a good poet." Don't be like this random white guy. Easy way to get blocked.
OMG OMG one of my students I worked w/just told me she had poems accepted at diode, The Margins & now THE GEORGIA REVIEW... I'm so stoked & proud! OMG💙🙏
Very cool! I made my first cover of a
#litmag
, as Colorado Review will publish two of my poems this summer: "Saludos to the Moon" & "The Tattoo of Moctezuma."